Michael Leunig finds modern meaning in the Easter story

By Annette Marner, Eloise Fuss

He's a poet, cartoonist, philosopher, and official National Living Treasure. In a special Easter interview Michael Leunig shares what the story of Jesus' crucifixion, and its messages of suffering, mean to him.

The Easter season for millions of Australians is a deeply spiritual time, it commemorates for Christians the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Good Friday for 2000 years has been a time when Christians meditate upon and look for meaning in the suffering of Christ, the Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.

Michael Leunig's vision of humanity reveals the mystical within the commonplace- a teapot, a duck, an empty path, a sunrise. For him there are many messages to be found within the biblical Easter story.

Leunig has expressed that everyone shall be crucified and broken like Christ, but that which is Christ like in people shall rise again to love and create.

"Easter is reflecting upon suffering for one thing, but it also reflects upon Jesus and his non compliance in the face of great authority where he holds to his truth- so there's two stories there.

"That's how I always interpreted that Easter story, and that Christ is not the redeemer out there, it's what is within."

Speaking with ABC's Annette Marner, Leunig shares his belief that there's a cost for those brave enough to say aloud what they believe is true, and the Easter story shows that.

"There is a suggestion in this story that there is redemption in holding onto that authentic truth of self and offering it."

"One of the things it's explicitly taught me is that here is Jesus, the outspoken one, the one that speaks a personal truth and theologically is it at odds with his culture, he says that the divinity is within and not out there.

"So he becomes offensive to his people and his society in some ways, but he holds to that and is therefore bought down and is tortured to death essentially, and there's a lesson in that for all who would speak their personal truth."

"There shall be some form of crucifixion, whether it's within the injustices within our life, or just the very fact of dying eventually. There is some suffering that awaits us all."

He says suffering comes in all types of forms, and to some people more than others- whether it's a harmful accident, the break-down of a relationship, the conditions in which people are born, or an illness.

And beyond those major challenges are the struggles faced in careers and passions.

Leunig finds that even the act of being creative can involve suffering.

As an artist and cartoonist he might start with an idea he has in his mind, but quickly lose it.

"The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act- we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

"But by staying in that suffering and not being too afraid, we find that new thing."

And this bit, says Leunig, is what gives meaning to suffering.

"It's sometimes in the midst of people's suffering that the light comes on.

"How many times have I heard people say 'I became very ill a couple of years ago, it got very serious, and I look back and give thanks for how it changed me and the truth I found'."

His views of how beauty can emerge during suffering comes across in his cartoon 'A common prayer'.

It shows a man carrying a cross and he is bent right over under the weight of it, yet by his nose is a plant in flower, and a bird sits on the lateral of the cross.

Leunig is passionate that one of the places people can draw comfort from is the natural world, and that getting close to it can reveal a rawness, truth, beauty, and harmony.

"As we grow, we lift our gaze higher and higher and then sometimes we are brought to our knees, but all is not lost, what we find on the ground can be very valuable and precisely what we need.

"It's a hopeful take on it but I find that is what happens, I find it has happened in my own life many times."

He says that common modern lifestyles, based in the city and swarming with technology, are disconnecting people more and more from the natural world, and this poses a major social danger.

"I think we live in delusional times, whether it's with a great ability to totally distract ourselves with technology, or with speed and the velocity of life.

"We are being led away from this natural balance which is essential to sanity and health."

"You'd have to look at the planet at the moment and say, humans are tearing each other apart.

"Wars don't happen on battlefields, they go on happening in people's hearts for generations and generations, and the ecological damage is unfathomably complex and dire."

And he thinks technology certainly won't help create a more peaceful earth. He says while technological devices like computers and the internet can be tools for enlightenment they can also be a tool for the "worst impulses".

"Practically every technology that is ever invented is touted as being the new saviour, the thing that will bring peace and goodwill to the earth, but immediately it falls into other hands who see it as the opportunity to promote the very opposite."

But he's not trying to bleak, Leunig says, just realistic.

"I'm encouraging people to look issues in the face, and by knowing the worst of it, people can act with wisdom."

And he says there is always hope because new life, and therefore innocence, is always being born.

"The drive towards truth and beauty is irrepressible in humanity and sometimes when it's down to its last gasp it comes to life again."